“Clear?” repeated Birdie unsteadily.
“Yes—you get your chance. That’s one reason why I came here to-night—to spoil Slimmy Jack’s play, to see that you got your chance if you really wanted it, as”—he added whimsically—“I was informed you did. Go ahead, Birdie—make your get-away—you’re free.”
But Birdie Lee shook his head.
“No,” he said, and his voice caught again. “It’s no good.” He pointed to the still form on the floor. “I guess I go up for more than safe-crackin’ this time. I—I guess it’ll be the chair. When they find him here—dead—shot—they’ll call it murder—and they’ll put it onto me. The police know we have been together for years. They know he came here to-day when I got out. We’ve been seen together to-day. We—we were seen quarrelling this afternoon in a saloon over on the Bowery. That was when I was refusin’ to start the old play again. They’d have what looked like an open and shut game against me. I wouldn’t have a hope.”
It was a moment before Jimmie Dale answered. What the man said was true—he would not have a hope—for an honest life—after five years in the penitentiary. He lifted his flashlight again and played it over Birdie Lee. They showed, those years, in the pallor, the drawn lines, the wan misery in the other’s face.
And then Jimmie Dale’s lips set firmly under his mask. There was a way to save the man. It was something he had never intended to do again—but it was worth the price—to save this man. It would be like a bombshell exploded in the underworld; it would arouse the police to infuriated activity; it would stir New York to its depths—but, after all, it could not touch Smarlinghue. It would only instill the belief that somehow Larry the Bat had escaped from the tenement fire; it would only mean a hunt for Larry the Bat day and night—but Larry the Bat no longer existed—and it would save this man.
He clamped the flashlight between his knees, leaving his hands free, and from the leather girdle drew the old-time metal case, thin, like a cigarette case, and from the case, with a pair of little tweezers that precluded the possibility of telltale finger prints, lifted out a small, diamond-shaped, gray-coloured paper seal, adhesive on one side, which he moistened now with his tongue—and, stooping quickly, attached it to the dead man’s sleeve.
There was a sharp, startled cry from Birdie Lee.
“The Gray Seal! You’re—you’re Larry the Bat! They passed the word around in Sing Sing that you were dead, and—”
“And it will be the Gray Seal who is wanted for this—not you,” said Jimmie Dale quietly. Then, almost sharply: “Now make your get-away, Birdie. Hurry! You and I part here. And the greater distance you put between yourself and this place to-night the better.”
But the man seemed as though robbed of the power of movement—and then his lips quivered, and his eyes filled.
“But you,” he faltered, “you—you’re doing this for me, and I—I—”
Jimmie Dale caught the other’s arm in a kindly grip.
“Good-night, Birdie,” he said significantly. “I’m the last man now that you could afford to be seen with. You understand that. And I guess you can understand that I’ve reasons for not wanting to be seen myself. You’ve got your chance; give me mine to get away—alone.” He pushed the man abruptly toward the door.
Still Birdie Lee hesitated; then catching Jimmie Dale’s hand, he wrung it hard—and, with a half choked sob, turned and made his way from the room.
For an instant Jimmie Dale stood looking after the other through the darkness, listening as the stealthy steps descended the stairs—then suddenly he knelt again beside the dead man on the floor.
“You were clever, Slimmy!” he murmured. “Smarlinghue wouldn’t have had a chance of getting out from under this break—if your plans had worked out! And I didn’t know you, of course, because you were a Chicago crook.”
He took off the dead man’s mask, and played his flashlight for a moment over the cold, set features.
A queer smile twisted Jimmie Dale’s lips.
It was “Clancy of Headquarters”!
Chapter IV.
The Diamond Pendant
The “murder” of Slimmy Jack had evidently been discovered too late for the make-up of the early morning papers; but from the noon editions onward it had been flung across the front pages in glaring type—even the most stately journals, for the nonce aroused out of their dignified calm, indulging in “display” headlines that, quite apart from the mere text, could not but have startled their equally stately and dignified readers. The Gray Seal, the leech that fed upon society, the murderer, the thief, the menace to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, the scourge that for years New York had combated in the no more effective fashion than that of gnashing its teeth in impotent fury, had suddenly reappeared with a fresh murder to his credit. And New York had thought him dead!
Jimmie Dale, leaning back on the seat of his limousine as the car, now halting at a corner, now racing with a hundred others to snatch a block or two of distance before the next monarchial traffic officer of Fifth Avenue should hold it up again a victim to the evening rush, turned from first one to another of the pile of papers beside him. His strong, clean-shaven face was grave; and there was a sober light in the dark, steady eyes. In the St. James Club, which he had just left, perhaps the most sedate, certainly the most exclusive club in New York, it had been the one topic of conversation. Elderly gentlemen, not usually given to excitability, had joined with the younger members in a hectic denunciation of the police as criminally inefficient, and had made dire and absurdly vain threats as to what they, electing themselves for the moment a supreme court of last resort, proposed to do under the circumstances. The irony was exquisite, if they had but known! Also there was the element of humour, only there was a grim tinge to the humour that robbed it of its mirth—some day they might know!
He glanced out of the window, as the car was held up again. Everybody in the crowd, that waited on the corners for the stream of traffic to pass, seemed to have their eyes glued to their newspapers—even Benson, his chauffeur, during the moment of inaction, was surreptitiously reading a paper which he had flattened out on the seat beside him!
Jimmie Dale’s eyes reverted to the newspaper in his hand, one of the most conservative. There was no mistaking the tenor of the leading article on the editorial page:
“It is not so much that a thug and criminal known as Slimmy Jack should have been murdered by another wretch of his own breed; indeed, that such should prey upon one another is far from being a matter of regret, for we might hope in time for the extermination of them all by the simple process of mutual attrition and at correspondingly little expense to ourselves—but that this so-called Gray Seal should still prove to be alive and at large is a matter that concerns every citizen personally. He does not confine his attentions to the Slimmy Jacks. The criminal records of the past few years reek with his acts, that run the gamut of every crime in the decalogue, crimes for the most part actuated apparently by no other motive than a monstrously innate thirst for notoriety—and the victims, for the most part, too, have been the innocent and the defenceless. What is the end of this to be? If the police cannot cope with this blood-mad ruffian, is New York to sit idly by and submit to another reign of terror instituted and carried on under the nose of authority by this inhuman jackal? If so, we are committing a crime against ourselves, we are insulting our intelligence, and—”
The man who had written that was a personal friend! Jimmie Dale threw the paper down, and picked up another, and after that another. They were pretty well all alike. They rehearsed the discovery of Larry the Bat as the Gray Seal; they rehearsed the story of the fire in the tenement of six months ago in which it was supposed that Larry